Big crowd heading for Big House

Today’s game at the Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor may set a new record for an official attendance at a Chelsea match.

Nearly every ticket has been sold for the meeting with Real Madrid and with ‘the Big House’ as it is nicknamed, having a capacity of 107,601, a huge crowd is guaranteed.

Chelsea have played in front of 100,000 at Wembley Stadium on three occasions, all cup finals. They were in the FA Cup versus Tottenham in 1967 and Leeds in 1970, and against Stoke in the League Cup in 1972. In the Champions League in 2006 there were 98,436 at Barcelona’s Camp Nou for our visit in the Round of 16.

Although it is widely accepted that over 100,000 were inside Stamford Bridge when we played Moscow Dynamo in the wake of the Second World War, the official attendance that day was 74,496, with many thousands having found a way in without paying. The largest record crowd at the Bridge is 82,905 for a visit of Arsenal in 1935.

With Ann Arbor the home to the University of Michigan, the Big House is primarily a venue for the college’s American football team. It is the largest stadium in the USA.

Chelsea’s third game of this tour, against AC Milan on Wednesday, is expected to be break the record for the largest attendance at a soccer match in the state of Minnesota. Enough tickets have been sold, for what will be the inaugural event at the new US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, to beat the 46,370 who watched a 1978 match between the Minnesota Kicks and the New York Cosmos.